China Counterfeiting Written by Geoff

China counterfeiting written by Geoff Naim (2011) addresses the value of intellectual property. Because more businesses are shifting at least some of their work to China, they are finding that they have to learn new ways to protect their intellectual property so they do not end up losing out to untrustworthy employees and other countries. It is not that China is any less trustworthy overall than any other country, but only that it is so far away from many other places and things are handled differently there. If a company is not used to the way things are done, or that company cannot keep a close eye on its workers, it is very possible that things can go wrong. That is one of the main problems that is being seen in China, according to Naim (2011). More than 85% of the counterfeit goods in the U.S. And other countries come from China, as it is the worst offender for those kinds of things. A recent example was the new iPhone. Before it even came out there were counterfeit, Chinese version available and they were 1/4 of the price of the real thing (Naim, 2011).

Companies fight back when they see that their goods are being counterfeited, but they do not always have a lot of luck in that department. It can be difficult to win a judgment across countries that way, and there are specific rules that have to be followed when attempting to prove that something is counterfeit. If a company changes a product just enough, it can get away with making it and not violating the copyright of the company that originally made the product. Many times, design plans are stolen by counterfeiters, and then those plans are used to make the products and put them on the market before the actual product is available. Companies have been shut down for doing this, but there has only been limited success in stopping Chinese companies from counterfeiting. A British company that makes speakers, B&W, has found that cease and desist letter are generally enough to get Chinese companies to stop trying to make their products (Naim, 2011).

B&W has also been proactive in that it built a warehouse and production department in China. It can keep a better eye on its employees, and the Chinese people have started to buy B&W speakers because of the quality. That is very good news for the company, since it now has another outlet for sales and another market in which to sell its goods. The company also has a specialized production process, so it is hard to replicate the speakers that it makes (Naim, 2011). Because of the complexity of the process, counterfeiters generally avoid trying to copy the company. The counterfeiters who try do not usually get good results, and that discourages them from continuing. That is another bonus for the company, because there is not as much of a need to worry about whether the speakers it makes will be copied and sold for much less than the originals would bring.